Each year, the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on the Structure and Organization of Government (SOG), sponsor of the journal Governance, awards the Levine Prize. The Prize is awarded to a book that makes a contribution of considerable theoretical or practical significance in the field of public policy and administration, takes an explicitly comparative perspective, and is written in an accessible style.  It is named in honor of Charles H. Levine, who was an accomplished member of the Research Committee and served on the editorial board of Governance. The prize is awarded on the recommendation of a distinguished committee.

The 2010 Levine Prize

July 8, 2010 — The 2010 Levine Prize has been awarded to Bringing in the Future: Strategies for Farsightedness and Sustainability in Developing Countries (University of Chicago Press, 2009), by William Ascher.  Ascher is the Donald C. McKenna Professor of Government and Economics at Claremont McKenna College.

The 2010 Levine Prize Committee was comprised of Professor Mirko Noordegraaf, Utrecht School of Governance (Chair); Professor Susan Phillips, Carleton University; and Professor Anthony B.L. Cheung, Hong Kong Institute of Education.

The Committee says: “Farsightedness is no doubt much in demand for governmental efforts on sustainability, but what is needed is concrete advice to navigate one’s way through the myriad of uncertainties, recalcitrance and shortsightedness built into both cognitive prejudice and institutional inertia.  William Ascher has published a highly readable book which precisely addresses these practical problems, with clear categorization of problems and strategies, and hints on how to manage the process.  His long menu of innovative and insightful approaches and tools to overcome them stem from economic, as well as social psychological theories – such as altering the existential situation of people so that they would think differently, creating or rescheduling both tangible and intangible rewards (including increasing nearer-term benefits of farsighted actions), shaping communications to establish climates or moods, improving analytical frameworks, framing the appeals, creating conducive institutions, restructuring decision-making processes and rules of interaction, and realigning performance evaluation. The book should serve as an essential reader in public policy studies, and a must for all policy practitioners, government leaders, senior civil servants, politicians as well as advocates from NGOs.”

The Prize Committee has also given special recognition to two books.  The first is One Nation under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2009), by Allison Stanger.  Stanger is the Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics and Director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs at Middlebury College.  The committee says that the book “focuses on what the author describes as the privatization of foreign policy in the US – the outsourcing of the three Ds: Diplomacy, Defense, and Development. Extending the usual critique of privatization, it questions whether the government’s role as chief custodian of the public interest has been subject to increasing erosion by outsourcing such critical areas related to national interest and security.”

Recognition is also given to The Politics of Global Regulation (Princeton University Press, 2009), a volume edited by Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods.  Mattli is Professor of International Political Economy, St. John’s College, University of Oxford, and Woods is Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme, University College, University of Oxford.  The committee says that this book “critically reflects upon the increasing voice among countries to tighten up regulatory control at the national and global levels. Will we see the rise of ‘regulatory states’ of a new kind? This book serves as a timely caution that regulatory capture or hijacking could take place in this newfound enthusiasm for regulation.”

Previous winners of the Levine Prize

2009: Mitchell A. Orenstein, Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform (Princeton University Press, 2008).  “The opening of personal pension statements has become a dramatic moment in recent years, given far-reaching shifts in many pension systems around the world and doubts concerning the viability of many plans. Mitchell A. Orenstein offers a penetrating analysis of the evolution of pension governance, placing emphasis on the ability of transnational actors to persuade many of their national counterparts to embrace privatization principles in recent decades. From Chile to Kazakhstan, Privatizing Pensions demonstrates how advocates of pension privatization advanced their case in recent decades through a mixture of ideational tactics and material incentives. These entrepreneurs were not uniformly influential, and yet their overall record suggests a considerable capacity to influence decisions that generally would be expected to be sealed within a domestic policy process. Orenstein’s contribution will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and policymakers, both for its insights into this particular area of governance and also for its exploration of the transnational-national dynamic. The book also opens important doors to further investigation of this dynamic in other policy arenas.”

2008:  Mark Thatcher, Internationalisation and Economic Institutions: Comparing the European Experiences.  Oxford University Press, 2007. “This volume is an important new theoretical contribution in its specification of a concept of internationalization that is not globalization and its understanding of national economic institutional reform in a way that is not just supra-nationalization within continental treaty blocs. Its theoretical and empirical sophistication, along with its comparative scope, more than warrant the recognition and honor of the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize.”

2007: Alasdair Roberts, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age, Cambridge University Press, 2006. “The book deals skillfully with an issue of central importance in modern governance: the openness of government to its citizens. Roberts charts the rise of transparency mandates across the globe, noting the potential of laws, such as the Freedom of Information Act, to foster greater accountability and responsiveness in government. However, Blacked Out shows how governments undermine or curtail transparency laws by creating exemptions for security issues, erecting administrative barriers to make access to information more difficult, and undermining implementation by failing to provide necessary resources. The book also skillfully considers how current trends—toward privatization, globalization, networks, and technology changes—affect openness in government.”

2006: Herrington J. Bryce, Players in the Public Policy Process: Nonprofits as Social Capital and Agents.  Palgrave/MacMillan, 2005. “Organizations with substantial public trust and public purposes themselves, nonprofit organizations often compete head-on with much larger and often more professional private corporations for government contracts. The NGOs often win. In fact, they consistently win in many areas. Bryce demonstrates the reasons for these facts. In applying well-developed theories from principal–agent literature, he makes clear that there are substantial advantages to public–NGO alliances in government service delivery. The committee believes that the book has general applicability and will be increasingly important in the years to come as governments across the globe continue to search for the most efficient and effective ways to provide public services. Partnerships with organizations that themselves serve a public service are already a substantial part of this equation and will increasingly be so. Bryce shows why this is the case.”

2005: Atul Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery. Cambridge University Press, 2004. “Atul Kohli’s argument is complex and eschews formulas or simple recipes. His cases show that much depends on circumstances and the discovery by trial and error of policies that work. The lesson to be drawn is that there are no simple solutions, easily duplicated by aspiring industrializers. Instead, leaders must know the historical and institutional circumstances of their societies, must be able to identify challenges and opportunities, and must have the political steel to articulate bold solutions and carry them out.”

2004: Jonathan Malloy, Between Colliding Worlds: The Ambiguous Existence of Government Agencies for Aboriginal and Women’s Policy.  University of Toronto Press, 2003. “This is a persuasively argued, lively written book. The committee was particularly impressed with the sustained comparison across two policy fields in two countries, and the way in which the author integrates conceptual and empirical analysis. This is an unusually enjoyable read, which offers an important policy message: in a world of proliferating social activism, ambiguity in administration may be a blessing rather than a curse for making governance more efficient, effective, and legitimate.”